Automatic tobacco harvesters are now being widely used in harvesting flue cured tobacco. To-date, the self-propelled, high clearance type of automatic tobacco harvesters such as shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,841,071 and 3,507,103 have met with much commercial success as they are presently being widely used by tobacco farmers. Such self-propelled, high clearance type automatic tobacco harvesters are generally relatively expensive, and consequently many small tobacco farmers have not been able to justify purchasing such an expensive and high capacity tobacco harvester in view of the cost thereof.
Long Manufacturing Company has just recently introduced a tractor mounted tobacco harvester substantially like the tobacco harvester shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,834,137. Being tractor mounted, the tobacco harvester is adapted to readily attach to a conventional farm tractor and in most cases the farm tractor used would be a tractor that the farmer already has on hand. It appears that tobacco farmers, especially small tobacco farmers, are looking favorably on such a tobacco harvester because of the "tractor mounted" feature that makes the harvester relatively inexpensive when compared wit the self-propelled, high clearance models available. With the Long tractor mounted harvester, however, significant departure is made in the harvesting or priming practice. Traditionally, flue cured tobacco crops are primed a number of times during the harvesting season, the number of primings ranging generally between three and five with the tobacco stalks being initially primed at the bottom and each subsequent priming progressing upwardly therefrom. Each priming in the traditional multipriming practice consists of tobacco leaves taken from the same general area of the tobacco stalks and the type and quality of the leaf is generally the same throughout.
With the Long tractor mounted automatic tobacco harvester just referred to above, the mechanical design thereof does not give the harvester the ability to make multi-passes and to prime certain levels of the tobacco stalks while leaving other levels unprimed. To the contrary, the Long tractor mounted automatic tobacco harvester is essentially a "once over" tobacco harvester in that the basic feature of the design dictates that during the harvesting operation all leaves on the stalks are removed by one pass of the harvester. Accordingly, the leaves at the top and bottom of the stalks are mixed together and are not generally segregated as is the case in the traditional harvesting practice.